Source: Religion News Service
http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=17075
Church leaders from around the globe met Wednesday (Dec. 3) in Washington to discuss their hopes for an Obama administration and their wish for a new style of leadership in the Oval Office.
Leaders from U.S. churches gathered for a three-day summit convened by the Geneva-based World Council of Churches' U.S. division.
The Rev. John Thomas, president and general minister of the United Church of Christ, stressed the American president's understated role as a public theologian who shapes the way people understand their relationship to God, their outlook on the world, and their sense of morality.
Last June, President-elect Barack Obama resigned his membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ after sermons by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, became a drag on his campaign.
"I do take comfort in the fact that Barack Obama has been schooled in this role by a preacher named Jeremiah," Thomas said, in a veiled reference to the outspoken Old Testament prophet Jeremiah.
Thomas said that he hopes Obama looks to Abraham Lincoln who "refused to pander to Americans' desire for optimistic and self-righteous interpretations of their own history even in the midst of this nation's greatest moral test."
Other leaders at the WCC summit brought up the recession and housing market collapse as concerns.